Adobe Premiere Pro creating unexpected network traffic

[Adrenaline Junkie]

I'm finding that Adobe Premiere Pro and some other Creative Cloud products are creating a substantial amount of unnecessary network traffic wasting network bandwidth, processor power, and memory. It is completely unacceptable that Adobe application services like CoreSync.exe, dynamiclinkmanger.exe, and Adobe Premiere Pro.exe continuously transmit and receive network traffic while I have Premiere Pro open. I even have all the cloud sync services turned off; not that having them on would be justification to continuously transmit encrypted data. This is similar to spyware or a virus.

First and foremost, Adobe come clean; what they are transmitting? Secondly, how do I turn it off? The only acceptable traffic would be a very small file once a month to verify my subscription. It appears you are transmitting copies of everything I am working on to amazonaws and other internet destinations without my authorization.

Has anyone else noticed this issue? What have you done to address it?

[kglad]

[moved from Adobe Creative Cloud to Premiere Pro CC]

[Dave Merchant]

If you're not using the Cloud stuff (Typekit, Libraries, links to the mobile apps and Sync) then you should be able to firewall all the Adobe applications, leaving only the desktop app free to communicate (which signs you in and out). CC is designed to work for several weeks without any network connection at all, but in practice it can start complaining very quickly. It would be sensible if the entire package did subscription heartbeats through one shared executable that does nothing else and only talks to a single IP/port, so you can exempt that and block everything else, but alas.

Aside from those 'visible' cloud processes, all Adobe desktop software runs the product improvement program, aka Headlights, which sends detailed usage data (such as which combinations of tools and menu items you click on, but not the actual content of your files) back to the mothership. They can't see your screen, but they can tell if a feature is rarely used or if a dialog box is always cancelled. Also added to CC2018 is the 'machine learning' stuff, which looks at the content of files but only when they pass through Adobe's cloud servers. ML does not upload your files without asking. Both are controlled through the Adobe website under Account Management > Privacy, but there's no way to shut the telemetry off completely - for example you'll always see one of the LogTransport helper processes upload data each time a CC application is closed. You can firewall those completely and it won't have any negative effects.

See http://www.adobe.com/privacy.html for some vague info on the legal basis for collecting your data (though bear in mind that all that will have to be ripped up when GDPR arrives in May) but Adobe never give details about what they actually do with it, how it's encrypted, how long it's stored, how to demand deletion, who has access to it, etc. etc. I think it's safe to assume that your locally-stored documents are not slurped, but that anything you place on the Cloud part of Creative Cloud is visible to [insert agency name here] and thereafter anyone else who can think of a legitimate reason. Moral of the tale, don't upload anything you wouldn't want to print out and nail to a lamppost.